In a previous post here at TSZ Mark Frank asked why people doubt common descent.
A more interesting question is why did Charles Darwin doubt common descent?
Stephen Meyer has written two books which I think adequately answer both questions.
Those two books are:
In this thread I am willing to discuss either book, but I’d prefer to limit discussion to Meyer’s most recent book, Darwin’s Doubt
While Signature in the Cell concentrated on the origin of life, Darwin’s Doubt concentrates on the “Cambrian Explosion,” the sudden appearance of numerous distinct phyla and their subsequent diversification.
Neo-Darwinism offers no realistic account of origins, with the difference being that Darwinists can in the case of the origin of life assert that their theory does not apply while that excuse fails to apply to the appearance of different animals in the Cambrian and their subsequent diversification.
Just to prove I can – [Edited 09/15/2013]
Deleted from the OP – [Edited 09/201/2013] – Just to prove I can. “The arguments are the same for both:”
WJM fails basic logic again, offers up the same tired old false dichotomy
“If ToE is false then ID must be true!” 🙄
There aren’t two options WJM, there are three
1. Natural processes we know about are sufficient
2. Natural processes we haven’t discovered yet are sufficient
3. The Magic Designer did it.
If 1. turns out to be false that doesn’t make 3. true by default.
The “attempt” utterly avoids making any distinction between evolutionary processes and “tornado-in-a-junkyard”. This is all lumped in as chance with a default to “design” without the least expansion of what “design” explains or entails. There is no equivalence with genuine scientific enquiry.
You have no warrant for saying “Darwinists are so intellectually dishonest…” It’s a lazy slur and unworthy even of you. Others make the solid distinction between reality and imagination. Whatever you wish to imagine, imagine. If it does not impinge on reality, you can’t call it science. You are in the realm of philosophy and religion.
That seems wrong.
They say that biology has the appearance of being designed. They do not say that it appears to them that biology is designed.
Try reading for comprehension nex time.
It is laughable for you to continue to argue as if I am making a case against the theory of evolution when I have stated and explained repeatedly that I am not.
There are only two options available for the variation and selection aspect of evolutionary theory; chance/nature, or design/intelligence. Those categories are accumulatively exhaustive and mutually exclusive in nature. If chance mutation and natural selection are not up to the task they are required to perform in the theory of evolution, then the only alternative is design/intelligence. It is a sound dichotomy.
I did.
What I comprehended was that you wrote something that was worded to give people a false picture, but yet was worded to provide you plausible deniability if somebody called you on it (as I did).
Really, how many times must I say a thing before it sinks in? Yes. I have no problem with common descent. I’m not convinced that the mechanisms of change can be scientifically classified as “chance” (as opposed to intelligent or intentional) and “natural” (as opposed to artificial) because they have never been vetted as such. They have been ideologically assumed to be “chance” and “natural”, since the beginning of the theory, nothing more.
That means that this aspect of the ToE explains nothing because all data is assumed to be the product of chance and natural occurrences without any vetting whatsoever.
Nothing so Machiavellian, but apparently you cannot admit to simply misunderstanding what I said.
I’d buy that argument if someone could actually show scientifically data that was irreconcilable with RM and NS. You’ve argued from incredulity, but haven’t actually provided a sound scientific issue. Neither has Mung, Meyers, Dembski, Behe, et al. There are no such irreconcilable data elements. So what’s your argument, William, aside from “I don’t think it can work.”
…and they all readily admit that we, as humans, suffer from cognitive illusions, particularly when it comes to pattern recognition and common sense. In other words, we as a species are WAAAAAY oversensitive to seeing patterns where there are none. The following is a great example:
XXXOXXOXXXOOOXOOXX
That’s a random representation of coin flipping. X’s are tails and O’s are heads. Now, most people will immediately see the “cheating pattern” that of the first 10 flips, only 2 – or 20% – were heads. How can that be with a fair coin? Clearly something’s up.
No…there’s nothing “up”. There’s no slight of hand, there’s no “Intelligent flipping” or anything else going on. Random sequences just tend not to conform to human “common sense” concepts of “random”. They tend to be “streaky” and come in bundles. However, they also tend, over time, to regress to the mean. In other words, if we take that series out far enough, there will be places where heads bundle up as well and thus send the pattern the other way.
People fall prey to this faulty thinking all the time. Nutritionists prey on it, homeopathy preys on it, advertisers prey on it. People are notoriously bad at separating actual pattern from background noise. Hence the apparent appearance of “design” in nature when one looks at the world through the lenses of “common sense”.
However, if one actually takes off those faulty lenses and puts on a pair of scientific methodology lenses, one quickly realizes that the supposed appearance of “design” is just noise. There is no statistical significance to that appearance. And in fact, it is stochastically explainable with natural processes. There’s nothing magical about it at all.
I have no idea what you mean here. I certainly have no problem doing so.
The reliance on the rather inaccurate (and baggage filled) terms “chance and necessity” a la Monad is going to lead one down that “common sense” fallacious road every time. It’s a poor model for actually understanding natural processes. For one thing, it’s based on a false dichotomy and it begs the question. “Chance” in natural processes is far from the “common sense” chaotic concept most ascribe to it, even without the faulty sense humans generally have of it that I showed above. The old “tornado in a junkyard” image of “chance” is just nonsense. Matter at the atomic and subatomic levels does not work like marbles in a bag.
As to the origin of of the self-replicating molecule, I don’t see what that has to do with either RM and NS or with the discussion in general.
Well no…it is only appropriate for the naive layman. The scientist knows better than to trust “gut feeling” and will actually provide an hypothesis and test it using standard methodology to ensure that the assumption works no matter who looks at it.
Even if it were a challenge based on incredulity, what you don’t seem to understand is that I don’t need to present any argument whatsoever against RM & NS, nor do I have to provide an alternative. Even if I was just personally incredulous that RM &NS have sufficient capability, that’s all it takes to ask those that defend RM & NS as sufficient to back up their claim.
The problem is, if they hold that there is no means to determine if ID is necessary, there can be no means to determine that chance and nature are sufficient. It’s not my job to prove chance and nature insufficient; it’s not my job to provide any argument or evidence for ID; it’s not even my job to provide an evidence based criticism of the chance and nature assumption. All I have to do is simply challenge those that advocate it to support their assertion; they are then obliged to support their assertion.
They cannot. Your argument that there is no scientific evidence against the chance and nature hypothesis is irrelevant; there is no evidence qualifying chance and nature as sufficient in the first place. It’s an ideological assumption, nothing more.
Yet they simply assume that necessary mutational sequences are by chance, and simply assume selection is natural, without vetting those categorical assumptions as sufficient, and even admitting there is no way vet them as sufficient. To be able to vet them as sufficient, you’d have to know the parameters of what would make them insufficient, which would require (via a sound dichotomy) ID and artifice, which would mean there would be a scientific means for a finding of ID. Which Darwinists deny.
All such scientists are doing is trusting their “gut feeling” that mutations are chance and that selection is natural, without any means of determining it to be so.
All you are in essence saying is, if in doubt, default to ID, without the least expansion of what ID might explain or entail.
No. When in reasonable doubt, default to chance/nature.
The problem is, there is currently no way provided by Darwinists to even know if we should have reasonable doubt about whether or not chance and nature are up to the required tasks, because they have provided no metric by which to scientifically assess the functional potential and limitations of those agencies with regards to evolution.
There’s doubt. Scientists will always confirm where there is doubt or dispute on issues. Nobody knows for sure about the tree of life, especially at the root. ID adds nothing to scientific knowledge.
Not so, William. Science does not work that way and should not be required to. The Duane Gishs and Ken Hams of the world make that eminently clear.
Anyone can say, “I don’t buy that!” So what? Unless one can present their skepticism in the form of a scientific contradiction or an actual hypothesis that can be tested, the current paradigm, no matter its flaws, is going to stand. Why? Because that paradigm is a working model. You can say you don’t like certain parts of it, but nobody who actually uses it professionally or who teaches it is going to take you seriously. Certainly none of those folks are going to feel compelled to answer to nigglings.
The bottom line is, sure…you can claim “I don’t buy it” and “those that do need to prove it to my satisfaction”, but why would anyone actually cater to that? Why do any of us need to cater to your or any other ID supporters incredulity?
Begging the question via false dichotomy. First, for this “ID” to even be considered, it needs to be presented in a scientific format. Until then there is no such thing as “ID” in opposition to RM and NS. So, even if RM and NS were to be demonstrated as bunk, ID isn’t an alternative in any actual sense.
But even beyond that, assuming this “ID” could be shown to be a valid hypothesis, it is still NOT THE NULL. That’s something that ID proponents just don’t seem to grasp. Dembski tried to run with that ruse with CSI, but it’s a faulty ruse as so many have pointed out. You can’t calculate the probability of a comparison to something you don’t know, so there’s no way for this mysterious “intelligence” to be a valid default when you don’t actually know the parameters of what natural processes can do. To merely rely on “intelligence” because you “feel” it’s got to be there gets back to my point about faulty cognition; unless you can actually control for your “common sense” using the scientific methodology, this supposed “ID” hypothesis is not reliable. So out it goes.
Lastly, and this has been brought up before, no one has presented any actual data that suggests that the only two explanatory concepts for diversification of life are either “ID” or RM and NS. There could very well be other processes we’ve yet to come up with. So your claim that those are the only two considerations is bunk. That’s a false dichotomy. “ID” is not potentially the only alternative to RM and NS and it certainly isn’t the default alternative.
No, but if you wish your complaint to be taken seriously and actually addressed, then you actual do need to come up with a compelling reason to look at natural processes beyond what’s already been done.
Fair enough, but who’s job is it then? Clearly no one at the DI thinks it’s his or her job either. Given that, so far there is no such argument or evidence. So under that best case scenario for your side, RM and NS are shown to be bunk, but we’re left with no alternative. Uhh…ok…You win?
See above concerning taking your complaint seriously.
No…actually we’re not. You aren’t presenting any actual scientific challenge and you don’t represent any kind authority holding sway over the actual scientific community. That you have a personal issue understanding the workings of RM and NS is not sufficient grounds for any actual biologist, chemist, physicist or any other scientists to stop what he or she is doing and address your complaint. Again, that’s not how science works. Duane Gish et al tried that act for years. It worked for a bit, but people have caught on. We now ignore such taunts. We are perfectly content to wait for people like you to either a) get tired of ranting in a vacuum or b) getting off the sidelines and actually providing a scientifically valid criticism in scientifically valid format.
Uhh…well…actually, the links I provided show that can. Perhaps you didn’t understand them.
Actually, I’ve not made that argument. I have argued that there is no scientific evidence for ID as an alternative to RM and NS. I have also argued that thus far no one has presented a valid scientific complaint against RM and NS is a valid scientific format.
Wrong. See the links I provided.
Again, wrong on two counts. First, RM and NS have been vetted as I showed. Second, “ID” cannot be said to be the default opposition to RM and NS, so no one needs to propose such as a parameter to vet RM and NS.
You can keep making this claim, but it will still demonstrate an ignorance of what scientists have actually studied.
C’mon William. At least make an effort to rebut the evidence I presented to counter this tired claim:
William J. Murray,
Let’s hope William can absorb what Robin is saying and kudos to Robin for having the patience to make the effort. William, some of us here value truth, or at least a glimpse of the partial truth that the accumulation of data currently available is suggesting, above ideology or what their gut is telling them.
William, perhaps you can cite an instance in the history when it was fruitful to assume intervention in natural processes.
Newton toyed with the idea of angels tweaking the planetary orbits to insure their stability. How’d that work out?
Sure there is. That’s what population genetics is all about. Not to mention the work of Lenski and Thornton and others who are reconstructing evolutionary histories molecule by molecule.
Consider, for a moment, the writings of Behe, the most competent evolution critic. He has been able to list just a handful of systems he thinks are beyond the “edge” of evolution. All the other 999,999,999,999 evolutionary steps are fine with him.
And those systems he thinks can’t be reached by evolution are being researched. Wherever research has been done, he has been wrong.
Nah, William is like Mung in that respect, his deamon filters this sort of thing out and it simply does not exist in their reality.
Missing intermediates. God is in the gaps. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Are we cheerleading here? Do I here the siren song of guano?
ETA hear not here. Memo to self, be careful about correcting other’s typos!
petruska:
Your post. (More self-refuting nonsense.)
davehooke:
I guess that qualifies you as a “true skeptic” here at TSZ. Elizabeth would be proud.
As for me, I choose to ignore alleged skeptics who can’t be bothered to read that which they pretend to be skeptical of.
Are you skeptical of Holocaust denial? How many books on Holocaust denial have you read?
Are you skeptical of Geocentrism? How many books on Geocentrism have you read?
Are you skeptical of the Raelians? How many books on Raelianism and UFOs founding the human race have you read?
Or are you just a huge flaming hypocrite?
Any reason for me to keep posting from further chapters in Meyer’s book?
No one here seems to actually care to read and discuss the actual content.
I’d hate to be accused of “post and run.”
I’d also hate to be wasting my time on imbeciles.
Mung,
I am still waiting for you to explain why we should accept Agassiz’s authority on anything to do with the paleontological record of the Cambrian. Has science acquired more and better data on the fossil record in the 140 years since Agassiz died? YES or NO?
Stupid troll. Answer the bleedin question.
Not if you’re going to keep cutting and running from every question and criticism of Meyer’s incompetence and duplicity, no.
No one pushing this putrid pile of pseudoscience actually cares to defend the ID-Creationist crap Meyer is selling.
Then stop writing notes to yourself.
Approx 3 million papers on evolution for you to read then, Mung.
I would think no since it’s become quite apparent that you did not understand what you read.
Well, you could change that by…you know…actually caring to discuss the content. Thus far you’ve not addressed a single question about that content addressed to you. Why is that Mung? Did you really read the book? Or did you just have trouble understanding the glaring errors?
Apparently your level of hate has not yet risen to the point of preventing you from posting and running however…
Well, there’s an easy solution to this: learn something useful.
If Robin cannot find the huge glaring error in what she posted:
.. why should I point it out? Natural selection is an after-the-fact accounting; it doesn’t “cause” any mutations whatsoever. Perhaps the author means that functional elements evolve more slowly than non-functional elements, because natural selection is harsh on random mutations of functional elements.
You’d first have to demonstrate that the selection process is natural in the first place; nothing Robin linked to, that I can find, even tries to do this. Therefore, the selective pressures are simply assumed to be natural, rendering “natural” an ideological label, nothing more.
Just because you use the term “natural” or “chance (mutation)” in a prediction or a paper doesn’t mean you’ve actually vetted your mechanisms as such.
That is a failure of language not of theory. Humans have spent tens of thousands of years baking teleology into it their languages. Evolutionary biology simply had to work with what it was bequeathed.
Skepticism, from Wiki:
Let’s see. Most ID advocates do not claim that the theory that life or the universe was intelligently designed is a fact; they claim it is the best current inference from available evidence.
The only skeptics here are the occasional ID advocates that question what Darwinistic idealogues assert as fact and knowledge.
Actually they stole those equations from another subject and misapplied them. All part of the routine for dazzling the rubes. Are you dazzled William?
Not that it matters, but for the purposes of full disclosure, I’m a he.
Clearly if you don’t point it out, nobody is going to buy into your insistence that I made some boo-boo.
Natural selection is not a mere “after-the-fact accounting”; it’s a conceptualization of a process that has predictable limitations. As such, it’s falsifiable. Perhaps if you read the research, you’d understand what those parameters – and the the explanation and expectations – are limited to.
Get over yourself William. First, “natural” in that context means “environmental”. So my question to you then is, you’d like them to prove they are natural as opposed to…what…exactly? What else is there to look at when that is the basis of the hypothesis in the first place?
I can’t even actually imagine what you are getting at and how you think that the studies do not actually vet Natural Selection. I mean, unless you can describe some actual measurably repeatable, predictable, and consistent alternative to the natural underpinnings of the environment we have studied (physics, chemistry, geology, biology, etc), your complaint is just plain silly.
And just because you call “ID” a “theory” doesn’t mean it is one. Yeah, ok, got it. So then, back to the real science world were science has to be done based on the predictable foundations we are aware of – like the processes of the environment and how they contribute to fixing heritable characteristics. Which IS what was studied.
Hate to break it to you William, but the only processes we know about are based in nature. If you have an alternative that has been shown to be equally consistent, by all means present it and receive your Nobel at the door.
So all your rebuttal amounts to is a handwave. You didn’t actually address the fact that both RM and NS are vetted as distinct concepts with specific predictable limitations. Care to try again?
I don’t have to. You aren’t doing anything but hand waving here. Vetted as “concepts”? ROFL. You have to vet them for what they are proposed to be – natural, as opposed to artificial, and chance, as opposed to directed by intelligence/intention. Nothing you linked to provided any such vetting.
How do I know this? I’ve provided you with that answer several times in this thread alone. That you are immune to understanding that any “chance & nature” vetting requires a complimentary ID metric is not my problem – it’s yours. Darwinists claim there is no ID metric; therefore, there cannot be any “chance & natural” metric, because they would necessarily be two sides of the same metric. It’s that simple.
So, if you have a metric that can vet mutational processes as “chance”, and selection processes as “natural”, you must be able to tell where results would indicate “chance” and “nature” insufficient to the task, and where “artifice” and “intelligence/intentionality” must come into play. Which means you’d have to have a working ID metric to properly vet whether or not your mechanisms were “chance” and “natural”.
Do your links have an ID metric? No?
Calling a process “natural” and/or “chance” is not the same as actually vetting those processes as such.
I see WJM still hasn’t bothered to read about or learn even the basics of evolutionary biology.
He is however demonstrating nicely that the emptiest barrel does make the most noise.
In all the teeth-gnashing from the ID-Creationists over DD what has been 100% lacking is how Meyer’s claims fit in with the overall picture for ID’s history of life on earth.
AFAICT it’s something like:
Life first appeared on earth well over 3 1/2 billion years ago. It chugged merrily along all by itself as single-celled organisms until around 650 MYA when multi-cellular life evolved. Then we have roughly 100 MY of evolution – sponges, worms, the Ediacaran fauna. The suddenly WHAM! The Magic Designer shows up at the start of the Cambrian and takes some 20 to 30 MY to “design” lots of new body plans. Then just as suddenly the Magic Designer vanishes and allows evolution to proceed again. In the next 500 MY we get the Great Ordovician diversification, multiple mass extinctions and subsequent re-radiations of life. We get synapsids, reptiles, about 230 MY of dinosaurs, the Chicxulub impact, the rise of mammals, then eventually humans.
How about it guys? Is that ID’s story? What part did I get wrong, and what’s the “correct” one (with your evidence)?
But ID supporters insist there is an ID metric, and as they are two sides of the same metric there must also be a “chance & natural” metric also. Or don’t you know about FSCO/I?
William, don’t you think it’s a bit sad that it ultimately comes down to “but are random mutations really random?”
I mean, is that the whole basis of ID as you see it? That evolution is true, but the mutations (chance) component of it might have been guided by an unseen hand? So you accept the entirety of “darwinism” (or whatever) but just insist that it does not rule out a designers input?
Well, so much for ID huh?
WJM:
William,
Please try to learn from your mistakes. Lizzie and I explained this to you months ago in another thread.
A comment of mine from that thread, just before you bailed out of the discussion:
There is no need for me to address the patently absurd and irrelevant. If two groups can both contain that which requires design to explain, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
If an arbiting metric found that some biological feature may or may not require design, or may or may not be explicable in terms of Rm & Ns, then there is no justification for calling that mechanism random (chance) or natural (non-artificial).
Fair enough, but then you have no argument. You merely have opinion, and I might add, opinion not based on actual data research. So why exactly should anyone care what you think when you freely admit you have no science background and won’t bother to read any actual scientific research? Oh…you’re smarter and more honest than all the scientists who have actually studied RM and NS perhaps? Sorry William, but the evidence does not support that conclusion. Here’s why:
Once again, William, this is just plain old inanity. ID is not the null hypothesis. Heck, it’s not even science in any sense. So no, no one has to control for intelligence or prove that mutations are random as opposed to directed. We would only have to do such if someone actually demonstrated that “intelligence” outside human intelligence was used to design biology and was measurable. Thus far, that has not happened. So it’s not even wrong; it’s none existent.
And no, we don’t have to demonstrate that things like “average rain fall”, “ratio of grasses to forest”, or “average annual temperature variance” is natural vs artificial. Those are, by definition, natural processes and they have been vetted as selective pressures as my links demonstrate. You can ignore that or handwave it or curse it; I don’t really care. But the fact is, those are elements of “natural” “selection” and they have been measured against genetic variance and retention.
William, as shown, this is just plain old dumb. There is no “ID metric” and no, RM and NS do not require there be such. Saying that RM and NS require the falsification of ID to demonstrate that they are actually “random” and “natural” is like saying we have to posit angels tugging at planets and then disprove them before you can safely acknowledge that gravity is a product of mass’ affect on space-time. That’s just silly.
And let’s be clear: even If one of those “brilliant” ID types actually got of his duff and demonstrated that there was a) an actual testable ID hypothesis and b) from which an ID metric can be derived, such would then be a competing model, not the default alternative. I realize that’s hard to grasp when you are so sure you’re right and all, but that’s how science actually works. You might want to look into it.
You fail to understand the necessary logic. One cannot scientifically assert that mutations **are** random (chance), or that selection **is** natural (non-artificial), without vetting them as such; such vetting would require a metric that would necessarily distinguish where “nature” leaves off and “artifical” begins (as best explanation), and where “chance” leaves off and “directed” begins (as best explanation).
Your attempt to divert what is a valid dichotomy and logically necessary point is just hand-waving. “Angels tugging at planets” and “curved space-time” are not exhaustive, mutually exclusive categories, and “curved space time” is not predicated with an ideological modifier such as “natural” or “chance”.
Only in evolutionary theory do ideological zealots attach such unvetted qualifiers to their modules because they are attempting to sneak their anti-theistic, materialist worldview in as part of the science.
Mutation (variation) and selection are of course good theoretical constructs, but there is simply no scientific way proposed by darwinists to make the determination if such can be scientifically qualified as “chance” and “natural”.
I am not failing to understand that logic. I am suggesting that you have failed to understand the use of the terms “natural” and ” random” in RM and NS. “Random” in RM does not mean “chance” a la Monod via Dembski. And “natural” does not mean “not-supernatural” or “artificial”.
“Random” in RM means “not predictable” or “without pattern”. There’s nothing fortuitous about a mutation; they just occur. And this has been confirmed, William, whether you like it or not. There’s nothing to indicate any pattern, much less intent to mutations. They might be intended, but if they are, no one has yet been able to come up with a way to tell. As such, the best we can say is that currently they are unpredictable or “random”.
“Natural”, as I already pointed out, means “environmental”. Darwin used the term to contrast environmental pressure from human influenced pressure or “artificial selection” (a la breeding). So Darwin did indeed distinguish between “natural” and “artificial” and controlled for human involvement. So have subsequent genetic tests and environmental studies. What no one is going to test or control for, however, is non-human “artificial” influence because…wait for it…so far no one has been able to find any evidence of such a thing. And yet again, since there is no evidence or any indication for that matter of any strings being pulled underneath environmental conditions leading to intentional selection, and since neutral lab and field experiments have indeed vetted the environments independent influence on genetic heritability, there is no reason to even assume any “artificial” influence, let alone control for it in every or even any analysis of RM and NS systems.
You can cry foul all you wish here on TSZ or anywhere else, but it just won’t gain any traction because it isn’t valid criticism.
What you are complaining about is tantamount to saying that current medical transplantation science is faulty because it relies upon the assumption that the immuno response that can lead to organ rejection is assumed to be natural (and thus attempts to control the immuno response with natural pharmaceuticals) instead of considering (and controlling for) possible supernatural influence like demons killing the organs. All I can say to that William is, if you can present a model of demon influence on rejection of transplanted organs, even if indirectly by showing a correlation between increase in graft longevity and exorcism, I’ll gladly sign on. Until you do however, the model of transplantation is perfectly valid as is.
As for your conspiracy-theory-esque ridicule, you’re just plain wrong. Here’s Darwin’s statement on why he chose the term “Natural Selection”:
All WIlliam et al need to do is provide evidence that they can be predicted and ID wins. Yet it seems they would rather concentrate on something else entirely. I wonder why…..
Sure, so let’s teach the kids instead that Jesus guides every mutation, as you obviously believe but can’t quite bring yourself to say.
Luckily we don’t have to as KF has provided a way. And it seems that the answer is “it was designed”.
What was the question? Oh, that really does not matter. It’s the same answer every time regardless.
Absolutely right, William.
As many of us keep saying, ID is unfalsfiable.
No scientist can claim, qua scientist, that biology is “natural” or that mutations are “random”. They simply aren’t scientific claims. They aren’t even meaningful.
We can say on the basis of evidence that the distribution of mutations does not comport with foresight.
What ever happened to the claim that mutations are mostly detrimental and genomes are melting down?
Is this compatible with the claim that mutations are directed?
William,
Your argument posits two false dichotomies:
You’re neglecting the “both” and “neither” categories.
There are two kinds of “both”: One is if intelligence is a natural phenomenon, because then design itself has “natural/chance” causes. Another kind of “both” accounts for things that are partly designed and partly caused by unguided processes.
The “neither” category would include unintelligent supernatural causes.
Besides depending on False Dichotomy 1, this assumes that the metric is perfect: no false positives, no false negatives.